Sunday Funday: Weekend Update & The Circle (2017)

Happy weekend everyone!  I don't know about you guys, but my week has been absolutely insane.

In bookish news, I was a lucky winner of an ARC of It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura via Epic Reads - thanks again!  This YA LGBT Contemporary will officially be released on May 9th - and it sounds very promising.  This week I also managed to finish two books - Given to the Sea by Mindy McGinnis and Saga, Vol. 7 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples - my reviews are linked, by the way.  I wish I could have read more and have participated in Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, but unfortunately, I was far too busy yesterday to take on that challenge, or read anything really.

Anyway, though, I did manage to take a shred of my spare time on Friday evening and go to the movie theater to see The Circle starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks.  Even, though, I wasn't the biggest fan of Dave Egger's original novel, I liked the concept enough and the trailers and the cast looked quite promising.  The cast also includes Karen Gillan, John Boyega, Patton Oswalt, and the late Bill Paxton.

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Through the help of a friend, Mae manages to land a job working for one of the biggest tech companies in the world called The Circle.  It's the opportunity of a lifetime and she jumps at the opportunities it affords, including healthcare for her MS stricken father.  As she progresses from her initial position with Customer Experience to taking the lead on a new experiment by going fully Transparent.  By taking this on, her every waking moment is watched and commented on by millions around the world at any given time.  From that moment on, every decision she makes will affect everyone she knows and cares about, not to mention the entire world.

To get right to it, there are some things I preferred about this movie adaptation in comparison to the original novel and there are some things I preferred about the novel to the movie.  Neither are bad, but neither are they great.  They are mediocre.  I will say that the movie is (only slightly) more thrilling than the book, since it's tighter and doesn't drag nearly as much.  The actors are all good, of course, but no one in this movie really shines.  But, I will say that Tom Hanks as Eamon Bailey, a bit more a villain here, gives about the best performance using the persona that you usually see when he's on tv talk shows.  Watson also does a decent job of pulling off Mae and supporting the entire film though admittedly her accent kind of slips a couple of times.  The movie is also very timely considering its subject matter deals with privacy and control.  Visually, I liked how the movie shows the comments from her screens and wrist bands, so we can see them as well.  The adaption follows the source material fairly well, but there are a few changes or deletions - my favorite change is in the ending, but no spoilers from me.

In regards to the things that I didn't like as much, I was hoping that the movie would really be able to amp up the paranoia and the thriller aspect, (which it does only slightly better than the movie) but it never gets to that point where it's truly suspenseful.  Aside from Hanks and Watson, though, the rest of the cast is underused and pushed to the background when they should be right in the forefront - I would have liked to have seen more of Karen Gillan as Annie.  Plus, sometimes the acting became overly dramatic and cheesy.  Like with the book, sometimes the characters, particularly Mae make dumb moves, and the movie isn't an exception.

Verdict: Borrow it, or check out some of Emma Watson's other films that have flown under the radar - for example, Colonia is excellent and quite thrilling.

Next up: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 - Hopefully, this coming Friday!


As always, thanks for visiting my blog, and perhaps even commenting below.  Happy Sunday everyone!